Survey by teachers finds privacy

Tuesday, May 9, 2006 | 7:30 a.m.

It's the time of year when school principals have traditionally braced themselves for a potential public flogging - the release of the teachers' annual performance evaluation of their bosses.

The survey - conducted by the teachers' union - has proven publicly embarrassing to Clark County School District administrators and has led more to sour grapes than marked improvements in management.

But this year the district and the union teamed up on the survey, agreeing that the results will not be shared beyond the two organizations. In exchange for the privacy, the School District has promised it will direct additional training and support to help low-scoring administrators improve their people skills, union President Mary Ella Holloway said.

George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources for the district, applauded the cooperative agreement.

"We've moved from a negative process, where things were listed in the paper or spoken before the School Board, but nothing ever seemed to change because people were backed into a corner trying to justify the results," Rice said. "This time the whole emphasis is about how can we improve."

The decision to keep the survey results private didn't sit well with everyone. Several teachers, who asked not to be identified, suggested the deal created an overly cozy relationship between the union and the district.

Holloway denied it.

"We're going to work with the district to remediate some of these problems without being loud about it and shouting it from the roof tops," Holloway said. "If we don't see some kind of improvement and a willingness to change at some of these schools, we'll go back to the old way (of conducting the survey)."

Holloway said that while the majority of the district's principals are committed professionals, some administrators interrupt classes with unnecessary use of the public address system, demand excessive paperwork and are indiscriminate with their authority.

The district's practice of swiftly promoting employees up the administrative ladder - a means of staffing new schools and filling vacancies to keep pace with the region's growth - is one source of the problems, Holloway said.

"We have administrators who were only a teacher for three or four years," Holloway said. "Sometimes a person who isn't secure in the job and doesn't have self confidence, they overcompensate. Sometimes principals just need to be educated on how to have interpersonal relationships."

Such teacher-satisfaction surveys are commonplace among school districts around the country.

The union in Clark County has conducted its annual survey for six years. The format has expanded to include questions about a campus's working environment and climate along with questions about a principal's job performance.

Teachers will not be shown the full survey results. However, Holloway said, "If they called up and asked about a particular school, we would give them an indication of whether or not it was a good one to transfer to. But we're not going to broadcast (the survey results) like we did last year."

More than half of the district's 16,000 teachers completed the online survey, which was conducted by a North Carolina education research firm. Teachers were given passwords enabling them to log on anonymously.

Teachers were encouraged to swap passwords with each other, to alleviate concerns that their responses might be traced, Rice said.

"We did everything we could to remove any perception that the district or the union would be trying to track people down, which we certainly are not," Rice said. "We wanted people to feel comfortable being open and honest in their responses."

In the past the teachers' union did not release results for a school unless at least half of the licensed personnel assigned to the campus took part. This year, schools needed a minimum of a 35 percent participation rate for campus results to be tabulated. Teacher responses from all schools, regardless of the school's participation rate, counted toward the districtwide results.

The survey is not intended to enlighten the public - such as the media or parents - as to how satisfied teachers are with their working environments, Rice said.

"It is not an accountability tool - it is strictly for the improvement of teaching and learning conditions that will ultimately result in teacher retention," Rice said. "And we all know how important a factor that is to student achievement."